Less means more. That’s kind of always how it’s been with us. This time the rules were simple: we can only use what we work with live and whatever we put down on tape must be accomplishable on a stage in a live setting. That’s always seemed to be when we’re at our best. Or most twitchy. Many times we’ve made records that we loved and then, after figuring out how we’d perform it live, we end up falling in love with the live arrangement because being a 2 piece band, it took some real risk and struggle which led to innovation, which gave it a whole new life.
So with this one we just started there and worked backwards. The result encapsulates, more than anything we’ve done before, the sound of our live performance. Resulting in what one might consider by definition, a definitive album. The summer and fall leading up to recording we spent writing songs, hanging out with family in Colorado, and playing shows opening for The Wood Brothers and Gregory Alan Isakov, both of whom have large audiences. So each night we were playing in front of a lot of people, many of whom had never heard of us.
We decided to take those opportunities to rattle our comfort zone cage and try out a bunch of brand new, just written songs and basically learn how to play them in front of a few thousand people. The songs would grow and change show to show, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Maybe we go down in flames? Maybe something beautiful happens while it’s burning? We happily embraced the chaos. That’s kind of always how it’s been with us. "Piranhanana" is about a boy growing up in a house of sex workers and being fine with it with a little meditation, while his sister struggles to find her zen.
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